• Nurses took off at Kajiado County Referral Hospital after a patient arrived vomiting.
• Doctors jump into action to disinfect reception area at the hospital, patient and her fiance isolated.
A patient was on Wednesday admitted with cholera at Kajiado County Referral Hospital, raising fears of an outbreak.
Tests at Kitengela Medical Services had shown the woman had been infected by the cholera bacteria.
She travelled some 45 kilometres and arrived at Kajiado referral hospital at around 2.30pm.
Reports indicated that the patient was vomiting when she arrived at the hospital and nurses and patients at the reception ran in different directions.
It took the effort of senior nurses and medical doctors to clear the area and order for disinfection of the entire place.
The patient, according to eye witness at Kajiado referral hospital was accompanied by her fiancé and were together rushed to TB manyatta which is outside the hospital’s gate for observation.
County Director of Medical Services, Dr. Ezekiel Kapkoni, confirmed the government facility received the patient.
“Immediately she said she had been diagnosed with cholera at the Kitengela hospital, we isolated her together with another person who had accompanied her,” Kapkoni said on Thursday.
Kapkoni on Thursday said the patient is responding to treatment but accused the doctors and administrators of Kitengela Medical Services of releasing a confirmed cholera patient to mingle with the public.
“They should have isolated the patient and asked for support from us,” said Kapkoni.
But the Kitengela Medical Services administrator, Moses Saningo, absolved himself from blame.
“Already, we had two other patients diagnosed with cholera and established that there was no space for her,”
Saningo said doctors isolated the patient to find an ambulance to transport her to the referral hospital in Kajiado, but that she disappeared.
Kapkoni said her case had been contained and the patient is responding well to drugs.
On Monday a 36-year-old woman was admitted at the Kericho County Referral Hospital’s isolation unit on suspicion that could be infected with the deadly Ebola virus.
The incident that caused panic in Kericho and across the country proved a false alarm as the woman was declared free of the contagious virus.
(Edited by O. Owino)